Now this one’s just silly ... a cancer-fighting bra

This being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we’ve gotten zillions of e-mails describing things you can buy in pink. These we can (just about) forgive.

But this was a new one on us: A PR person called to tell us that her client was developing a special bra that you could wear day to day to protect your breasts from cancer. “In its final development stages, the bra is designed to offer protection from harmful radiation,” she wrote in an e-mail. It’s made from some kind of radiation-deflecting fabric developed by her client, Radiation Shield Technologies, she further explained, and would shield a woman’s breasts from all that radiation out there.

Certainly, from what we read on discussion boards, finding a comfortable bra after a cancer diagnosis is of great interest to many women. Sensitive skin and swelling after surgery or radiation can make bras that are too tight or with underwire most uncomfortable.

And yes, we’ve heard the old myth about bras causing cancer -- here’s one article of many that have debunked that urban legend).

But leaving aside the fact that breast-cancer risk largely has to do with exposure to estrogen over one’s lifetime, it appears that this bra has been “in its final development stages” for quite a while. In 2009, CNN did a segment on the bra, inciting a blistering response from the Jewish Journal that is really quite funny (because it wasn’t aimed at us), so check it out.

Bottom line: It’s just underwear, you know?

-- Rosie Mestel / Los Angeles Times